Taylor Swift, Simon Cowell Rank High on Guardian's Media Power List

The Guardian has released its MediaGuardian 100 ranking of the most powerful and impactful people across the industries of art, advertising, tech, journalism and every other subsection of ways in which your eyes and ears drink in stuff.

Topping the list in outsize fashion is the technology business, with the world's top three digital companies -- Google, Facebook and Apple, in that order -- dominating the list's top three spots. While some names, like the fourth name on the list -- the BBC's director general, Tony Hall -- may not loom very large outside of the Protectorate, by and large the 100 faces on The Guardian's color-coded hall of power are largely agnostic when it comes to many, ever less opaque, borders of the world.

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The top billing in the music-specific realm isn't exactly a surprise, as Taylor Swift has proven she can not only dominate two genres, pop and country, and the sales therein, but also the international conversation around how we listen. The singer's exit from Spotify caused a tsunami of re-evaluation around these services that's still in the process of being digested.

Below, the music-specific names.

No. 10 -- Taylor Swift

No. 18 -- Simon Cowell (CEO, Syco)

No. 41 -- Daniel Ek (CEO/co-founder, Spotify)

No. 45 -- David Joseph (CEO/chairman, Universal Music U.K.)

No. 60 -- Bob Shennan (head of music, BBC)

No. 97 -- Alex Ljung (CEO/co-founder, SoundCloud)

And the tangentially music-related, most of whom either own a streaming service or run influential editorial around the subject. (Like Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, whose Music Key may or may not completely devastate the streaming landscape in the coming year.)